On Nov. 24 - 29, I will be going to Atlanta to cover the making of The Atlanta Way, a documentary produced by Georgia State University students about the current evolving architecture and demographic structure in the city. This project will show a behind-the-scenes production process of a depiction of a major American city. By 2010, Atlanta will be the first major city to eliminate projects.
Atlanta has seen a drastic shift in demographics in the past 10 years, becoming whiter at a faster clip than any city in the nation. This final project will depict a group attempting to provide a glimpse of the city in a time of flux for the many stakeholders, which include public housing advocates, proponents of reform (the Housing authority, business developers), city politicians and new residents in areas previously marred by blight.
The interviews, photographs and video coverage will tentatively include soundbites from Jarrett Williams (director), Ashley Simpson (producer) and Saba Long (consultant) from the documentary crew; sociologists Deirdre Oakley (Georgia State University) and Lance Freeman (Columbia University), history professors Chuck Steffen and Tim Cremins (Georgia State University); former public housing residents Shirley Hightower, Diane Wright and a few others.
The video and photography will be shot on location. There will be no article needed to fully convey this issue. As an added bonus, Atlanta is poised to have its first white mayor since 1974. Perhaps this is symptomatic of the changing city structure, which would surely heighten the relevance of this project.
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Zettler,
ReplyDeleteIt's fine to do a behind-the-scenes of a documentary, but I'm not sure you'd need to interview all the same experts that will be in the documentary. In that case you would be actually making the documentary yourself, and you don't have the time or space to do that in this project.
So you may just need to interview the filmmakers and a couple of people they talk to, and then document interesting moments in the shoot itself while you're there.
What do you think will be the headline of your piece? Are you focusing your interviews on the challenges of making the documentary? If not, what is your focus? Again, you can't tell the whole documentary in 4 minutes, so best to focus on something that you can add to it with your behind-the-scenes perspective.
-Jeff